CONSTITUTION. The fundamental law of a free country which characterizes the organism of the country and secures the rights of the, citizen and determines his main duties as a freeman.
2. Conetitution, in the former law of the European oontinent, signified as much as decree,—a decree of importance, especially ecolesiastioal decrees. The decrees of the Roman emperors referring to the due circa sacra, contained in the Cede of .Instinian, have been repeatedly collected end called the Con stitutions. The famous hull Unigenitus was usually called in France the Constitution. Comprehensive laws or decrees haVe been called constitutions thus, the Conetitutio Criminalis Carolina, which is the penal code decreed by Charles V. for Germany. In political law the word constitution came to be used more and more for the fundamentals of a government,—the laws and usages which give it its characteristic feature. We find, thus, former Eng lish writers speak of the constitution of the Turkish empire. These fundamental laws and customs ap peared to our race especially important where they limited the power and action of the different branches of government; and it came thus to pass that by constitution Was meant especially the fun damental law of a state in which the cititen enjoys a high degree of civil liberty; and, as it is equally necessary to guard against the power of the executive in monarchies, a period arrived—namely, the first half of the present century—when in Europe, and especially on the continent, the term constitutional government came to be used in contradistinction to absolutism.
3. We now mean •by the term constitution, in com mon parlance, the fundamental law of a free coun try which characterizes the organism of the coun try and secures the rights of the citizen and determines his main duties as a freeman. Some times, indeed, the word constitution has been used in rment times for what otherwise is generally called an organic law. Napoleon L styled himself Emperor of the French by the Grace of God and the Constitutions of the Empire.
Constitutions were generally divided into written and not-written constitutions, analogous to Ives edrip•te and no nee riptre. These terms do not indicate the distinguishing principle: Lieber, therefore, di vides political constitutions into accumulated or cumulative constitutions and enacted constitutions.
The 'constitution of ancient Rome and that of Eng land belong to the first class. The latter 'consists of Idle customs, statutes, common laws, and decisions of fundamental importance. The Reform sot is considered by the English a portion of the consti tution as much as the trial by jury or the represent ative system, which have never been .enacted, but Correspond to what Cicero calla legea natse. Our constitutions are enacted; that is to say, they were, on a certain day and by a certain aut'ho'rity, enacted as a fundamental law of the body politic. In many cases constitutions cannot be dis pensed with, and they have certain advantages which cumulative constitutions must forego; while the latter have some advantages which the former cannot obtain. It has been thought, in Many periods, by modern nations, that enacted constitu tions and statutory law alone are firm •glistranteas of rights and liberties. This error has been ex posed in Lieber's Civil Liberty. Nor can enacted constitutions dispense with the " grown le*" (lex watt). For the meaning of much that an enacted constitution establishes can only be found by the grown law on which it is founded, just as the Brit ish Bill of Rights (an enacted portion of the Eng lish constitution) rests on the common law.
4. Enacted constitutions may be either ecfroyed, that is, granted. by the presumed full authority of the grantor, the monarch ; or they may be en acted by a sovereign people prescribing high rules of action and fundamental laws for its political scr ciety, such as ours is; or they may rest on con tracts between contracting parties,—for instance, between the people and a dynasty, or between several states. We cannot enter here into the inte resting inquiry ooneerning the points on which all modern constitutions agree, and regarding which they differ,,—one of the moat instructive inquiries for the publicist and jurist. See Hallam's Consti tutional History of England ; Story on the Consti tution ; Sheppard's Constitutional Text-Book; El liot's Debates on the Constitution, &c., Philadel phia, 1859; Lieber's article Constitution, in. the Encycloptedia Americana; Rotteck's article Consti tution, in the Staats-Lexicon, 2d ed.